email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

RELEASES Belgium

Rediscovered youth in The Over the Hill Band

by 

Business is slowly returning to normal in Belgian theatres. This week, still marked by the summer lull, sees the release of seven new films, dominated by Quentin Tarantino’s latest, controversial title Inglourious Basterds [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, launched on 41 screens.

The line-up also includes two French titles. The first is Gabriel Julien Laferrière’s debut film Neuilly Sa Mère! [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(“Neuilly His Mother!”), a sort of reinterpretation of Life Is a Long Quiet River, boosted by a bittersweet cast led by young Samy Seghir (discovered in Michou d’Auber [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
). The film stars a host of familiar faces: Rachida Brakni and Denis Podalydès play a couple, alongside Valérie Lemercier, François-Xavier Demaison, Josiane Balasko, Elie Seimoun, Eric Berger and Olivier Baroux, to name but a few, promising to raise some Pavlovian smiles.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Aimed at a more limited audience, Caroline Bottaro’s Queen to Play is being launched by Cinéart on seven screens. The film was presented at the latest Brussels Film Festival, where it picked up the BE TV Award.

A dense line-up of Belgian films kicks off today with the release of Geoffrey Enthoven’s The Over the Hill Band [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. Produced by Flanders’ A Private View and Wallonia’s Artemis, with backing from the Vlaams Audiovisual Fund, the Film and Audiovisual Centre of the Belgian French Community and the Tax Shelter fund, The Over the Hill Band has all the ingredients to become a surprise late-summer hit, including its producer and co-screenwriter Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem.

After taking a humorous and subtle look at the theme of male middle age in The Only One, Enthoven this time focuses his camera on a trio of respectable women in their 70s who are bitten by the singing bug and led by one of their sons on an offbeat musical adventure, in the tradition of English social comedies like The Full Monty.

Lately, there’s been a resurgence of oldies on European screens, after the success of Mid-August Lunch [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and the UK documentary Young at Heart. Kinepolis Film Distribution is releasing The Over the Hill Band on 24 screens in Brussels and Flanders.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy